piano tuning advice

crucial

Hi there,

Just recently got an old upright cleaned and tuned and afterwards the tuner told me it was as good as new so I believed him as I'm a beginner anyway. Problem was I checked the tuning later with my guitar and it turned out he tuned it a tone lower than standard tuning. I then rang him back and he said because the strings in the piano were so rusted he didnt want to chance breaking them after cleaning so hence the reason for tuning it lower than normal. So now I have to wait until next year for the "strings to settle" before he can retune it properly. While I appreciate he did a good job cleaning and repairing a 40year old piano, I still feel a bit cheated that he didnt explain this to me beforehand. Just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience and if I should accept his response?

Thanks

Doshea3

This is very common: it's quite a job to raise the pitch of a flat piano and so most piano tuners don't bother tuning up to concert pitch in the hope that the player will not notice. It is true that in some cases the pitch cannot be raised for fear of breaking the strings, but I think your tuner is fobbing you off since he says that he could raise the pitch in the future once the strings 'settle'. If the strings really were in poor condition, it wouldn't be possible after any amount of 'settling in' to tune them up, given that (as far as one tuner has told me) the strings only need a matter of minutes or hours to settle after tuning (the tension on piano strings is extremely high unlike, say, guitar strings, and so strings requires less time to 'settle' after tuning). The same tuner who brought a couple of flat pianos to concert pitch for me (which necessitates tuning the instrument twice in order to stretch the strings first and then fine tune them once they have loosened) said that most piano tuners don't bother doing this because it is too much hassle.